Comment by xuki

Comment by xuki 2 days ago

For the past 15 years, mobile has been the main revenue source for Facebook. As big as Facebook is, they're at the mercy of the 2 competitors: Apple and Google. Apple has been very hostile to Facebook, because Facebook make a shitload of money off Apple's platform and they refused to pay a certain percentage to Apple - unlike Google who is paying 20B a year to access iOS users. Apple tried to cut Facebook off with ATT on iOS 14, but it didn't work.

Because of this, Zuckerberg has to be incredibly paranoid about controlling his company destiny, to stop relying on others' platforms to deliver ads. It would be catastrophic for Facebook to not be a main player for the next computing platform, and they're currently making a lot of money from their other businesses. Zuckerberg is ruthless and he is paranoid, he has total control of Facebook and he will use all the resources to control the next big thing. I think it comes down to this: Zuckerberg believes it's cheaper to be wrong than to miss out on the next platform, and Facebook can afford to be wrong (to a certain extend).

danpalmer 2 days ago

> For the past 15 years, mobile has been the main revenue source for Facebook. As big as Facebook is, they're at the mercy of the 2 competitors

Before mobile was this big, Facebook tried their own platform and bottled it. This was during the period that the market was still diverse, with Windows phones, Blackberries, etc.

They also tried to make mobile web a thing for a few years past when it was obvious that native apps were the way forward.

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xuki 2 days ago

Facebook certainly did not have the resources and experiences to make a mobile OS at that point. Microsoft tried and failed, there was no space for a 3rd mobile OS.
> They also tried to make mobile web a thing for a few years past when it was obvious that native apps were the way forward.
This was one of the first friction Facebook encountered with Apple. They wanted to make their own store in the Facebook app on iOS, but obviously Apple said no. Maybe doing Facebook app in HTML5 was a way to protest against the way Apple was moving things forward, but again it didn't work, their app was crap and they rewrote everything in native.

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- krige 2 days ago
  
  Microsoft tried and then pulled a google i.e. they randomly gave up on something people were actively using.
  
  Reply View | 1 reply
  
  AppleBananaPie 12 hours ago
  
  I might not remember well but I thought the App Store on windows phone was super lacking and actively falling further behind despite a bunch of efforts to prop it up.
  Not commenting on if the phones were good / used I never had one :) just trying to remember the state of things back then
  
  Reply View | 0 replies

cma 2 days ago

Meta Quest Store charges the same cut as Apple with stricter control in many ways.

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